By Max Schramm: Eddie Hearn says he now believes that Tyson Fury DID recently have COVID-19 while training for his now postponed July 24th fight against Devontay Wilder. Fury has produced a doctor’s note to show the fans to verify that he was sick with COVID-19, though,
Earlier today, Hearn’s fighter Conor Benn tested positive for COVID-19. He’s getting the same reaction from some fans, who think he’s faking to get out of a possible loss to Adrian Granados.
By Hearn saying that he now believes that Fury had COVID-19, that decreases the chances that he or a lot of fans will point their fingers at Benn to say that he was faking his diagnosis as well.
Hearn doesn’t care who wins Fury vs. Wilder 3
“Fury has got to not only beat Wilder, but he’s got to fight him first, and AJ has to beat Usyk,” said Hearn to Secondsout. “Right now, let’s just focus on that. AJ-Usyk is a monster fight. People have not stopped buying tickets. That will sell out in one day.
“I’m not really concerned about Fury because I don’t really care,” said Hearn when asked who is he more worried about between Fury and Joshua of slipping up in their interim fights against Usyk and Wilder.
“We’ll [Joshua] take whoever wins. We’re not devastated if Fury loses because we’ll fight Wilder. It’s not about Fury-Wilder. It’s about the undisputed.
“I don’t really care who wins that fight. I just care about AJ beating Usyk, and I believe he will, but I believe it’s going to be a very tough fight.
“AJ and also because Fury has beaten him [Wilder] twice,” Hearn said when asked ‘who has the tougher test’ because Joshua and Fury with their interim fights.
“The last fight [for Fury against Wilder] was a mismatch. So, AJ has the tougher fight.
“There’s still a bit of the unknown with Usyk at heavyweight. I know he beat Chisora and Witherspoon, but how many more levels does he have to go. He’s going to need to show many more of them to beat AJ,” said Hearn.
Not long ago, Hearn said that he hoped Fury would beat Wilder because it would be an easier fight to make between him and Joshua than if Deontay wins. Now Hearn is saying he doesn’t care who wins. In other words, Hearn flip-flopped.
It was a mismatch the last time Fury fought Wilder, but you can see that Deontay was hurt from the third round on.
The trilogy could play out a lot like the first one, with Wilder knocking Fury down a couple of times, putting the judges in a tough spot to try and pick a winner.
Eddie now believes Fury had COVID-19
“Some people don’t believe people. Nobody believed Tyson Fury had COVID,” said Hearn. “He probably did. I think Conor Benn is in a situation where he’s unlucky.
“He [Benn] looks after himself, and he takes precautions but somehow. But somewhere somehow, he’s picked up COVID, but he’s paid the price, but it’s not uncommon.
“I don’t want to say get through these fights, and it’s done because I don’t much believe what is said,” Hearn said when asked how he can make Joshua vs. Fury in 2022.
“What I will say is I can’t see an obstruction for that fight getting made. At some point, they’re going to say, ‘Come on, let’s make our money and make this legacy fight.’
“Undisputed, there will be no mandatory. Usyk will be cleared, and the Wilder stuff will be cleared,” Hearn said.
The timing of Hearn saying that he now believes that Fury had COVID-19 is odd, as it just happens to have come on the same day that his fighter Conor Benn tested positive for the virus.
Some boxing fans question whether Benn (18-0, 12 KOs) has COVID-19 and think that he wasn’t ready for his fight this Saturday night against Adrian Granados.
Hearn didn’t discuss the subject of ‘HOW did Benn get COVID-19?’ Was he vaccinated or not? Hearn said nothing about whether Benn was vaccinated for COVID, and that’s an obvious thing that he should have told the fans/media, but he didn’t.
If Benn wasn’t vaccinated, who takes the blame for not checking ahead of time? You guessed it. Hearn. When you’re talking main event fighters, the onus is on the promoters to be verifying that they’ve been vaccinated before they put them on a fight card, particularly if they’re in the main event, as Conor Benn was.
Fury is hitting the weights hard, bulking up for the October 9th fight with Wilder. One thing that may cause some to doubt whether Fury had COVID-19 was his preparation for the July 24th fight with Deontay.
Fury didn’t look physically ready for the trilogy match with Wilder for their July 24th postponed fight. He looked thin and wasn’t the same bulked-up 273-lb fighter we’d seen a year ago when he beat Wilder by a seventh-round knockout.
But now, with the training time that Fury has been given due to the postponement because of his alleged COVID-19 illness, he has extra time to bulk up and get his weight back to the 270s like last time.
It would be pretty sneaky for Fury to fake having COVID just so that he could have more time to train, but you can’t put it past him doing something like that.
Hearn doubts Arum wants Joshua-Fury in the UK
“That’ll probably happen, but then he [Arum] came out and said this fight [Joshua vs. Fury] should take place in the UK for the British fight fans,” said Hearn in talking about Top Rank promoter Bob Arum’s remark this week about wanting Joshua and Fury to fight each other in the UK in 2022.
“Do you think Bob Arum gives a monkey’s [backside] about the British fight fans.
“You’d basically be saying to the fighters, ‘You can do this fight in the UK, but you have to take half of the fight.’ Maybe they’d say ‘yes,’ but if you say to Bob Arum, ‘You have to take half of your commission to do it in the UK.’ What do you think he’s going to say? ‘
“I’m going to do that because I love the British fight fans.’ It’s in February, probably. It’s going to be in Millenium Stadium [in Cardiff, Wales].
“I don’t know how crazy Bob Arum is about Cardiff, but I don’t know if he realizes it rains that it rains in February.
“We can’t do it in London. He said, ‘It’s a really easy fight to make.’ Oh yeah, it was really easy. It was really easy. An easy fight to make. We’ll see, but I wouldn’t believe one world Bob Arum says,” said Hearn.
It sounds like Arum made a statement to get British fans excited about the prospects of the Joshua vs. Fury fight taking place in the UK in 2022. Hearn believes that Arum’s ultimate goal in saying that was to drum up interest in the October 9th fight between Fury and Deontay Wilder.
If British fans believe that the winner of the Fury – Wilder 3 fight will be facing Joshua in the Uk in 2022, they’ll be more likely to tune in and watch it.